


Heatstroke

by sludge



Series: Modern Day Meet-Cute [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, First Meetings, Fluff, M/M, Mechanic Keith (Voltron), Meet-Cute, Size Difference, Thirsty Shiro, keith: exists, shiro: oh no hes hot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-09
Updated: 2020-08-09
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:34:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25811398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sludge/pseuds/sludge
Summary: Shiro's car breaks down on the side of a desert highway. He's rescued by a wet dream of a man.The rider pulls off his helmet, black hair spilling out over his leather-clad shoulders. He's got eyes to match his dark hair, dark jacket, dark expression. There's a pair of sunglasses dangling from the collar of his shirt, dragging the red V-neck down to further expose the soft dip in the center of his chest. He looks like the cover of a paperback romance novel come to life. Shiro wonders if he's actually lying face-down in a ditch somewhere and this is just his dying dream as buzzards circle above him.
Relationships: Keith/Shiro (Voltron)
Series: Modern Day Meet-Cute [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1940935
Comments: 21
Kudos: 219





	Heatstroke

**Author's Note:**

> hi i marathoned all of voltron in 2 weeks and now i'm in hell! it's sheith time!!!
> 
> i don't know anything about cars, so feel free to correct me if i got things wrong lol

The day Shiro's car breaks down on the side of an Arizona desert highway turns out to be the hottest day on record that year. The horizon shimmers in the distance, cloudless blue sky meeting orange sand and stretching endlessly onward. It would be beautiful if it wasn't so damn hot.

He pulls off to the side of the road and tries to remember how long it's been since he last saw a rest stop. Or another living soul.

"Piece of shit," he grumbles, kicking the tire as he gets out. He immediately feels guilty—it's not the Mustang's fault it's pushing three decades and hasn't received any attention beyond a regular tire rotation and oil change since Shiro took over the title. He pops the hood and leans down to inspect it, as if he'll be able to understand the mess of wires and boxes within by staring long enough.

His shirt is already soaked through with sweat because the old car's AC system wheezed it's last breath a couple months ago and he's been at the mercy of passing desert winds ever since. But today is a still, airless day. This, he thinks, is his cosmic punishment for procrastinating.

But then there's a rumble in the distance. There, blurred by the heat, is a small, dark figure heading towards him from the horizon. Shiro turns and waves his arm, half-hopeful.

When the figure—a person on a motorcycle, Shiro realizes—pulls off to park in front of him and his car, he's not sure whether what he's seeing is real or just a mirage conjured by the haze of the desert heat.

The rider pulls off his helmet, black hair spilling out over his leather-clad shoulders. He's got eyes to match his dark hair, dark jacket, dark expression. There's a pair of sunglasses dangling from the collar of his shirt, dragging the red V-neck down to further expose the soft dip in the center of his chest. He looks like the cover of a paperback romance novel come to life. Shiro wonders if he's actually lying face-down in a ditch somewhere and this is just his dying dream as buzzards circle above him.

"Need a hand?" the rider asks, as if he isn't aware he's Shiro's guardian angel descended straight from the heavens.

"Uh..." Shiro's brain has stopped working. "I think I might need a jump? Or... or something. It started making a loud noise, so I pulled over to check it out. You know anything about cars?"

"I know some," the rider says, frowning. "Let me take a look." He shucks his jacket, draping it across the seat of his bike.

Shiro steps back from the hood and makes room for the rider, who says his name is Keith. Keith asks Shiro about the car: its year, what the loud noise sounded like, the date of its last tune-up (when Shiro sheepishly admits when that was, Keith side-eyes him). Keith leans over and starts fiddling around with pieces and parts Shiro could never hope to name.

Shiro tries not to ogle him, he really does. But he is a weak man.

It's just... certainly a sight to behold, Keith bent over the car. He's slender, but he's got decent muscle on him. The edges of his wrists peeking out from under fingerless gloves are on the bony side—Shiro could probably wrap a hand around one and have his index finger comfortably meet his thumb. The taut muscles of his back and shoulders flex beneath his thin red shirt as he works. He pulls a wrench out of the pocket of his sinfully tight jeans as if he was planning to rescue stranded drivers on the side of the highway today.

"Looks like it's your alternator that's gone out on you," Keith says grimly. "It's pretty common in this kind of heat. Nothing you can do but get it replaced."

That's what he gets for being irresponsible, Shiro supposes. He sighs and wipes away some of the sweat soaking his forehead. "Do you—can you do that? Replace the alternator?"

Keith doesn't answer, just gives a look like he's sizing Shiro up. Shiro knows some people are put on edge by his size, his one arm, his scars, but right now he's pretty sure he looks too much like a sweaty, slowly roasting chicken in this heat to look any kind of threatening.

"I work at my uncle's shop, 'bout 30 miles that way." He waves back in the direction Shiro came from. "I can get our tow truck and bring you in."

"You're a mechanic?"

Keith just grunts in affirmation as he tugs on something under the hood. He's saved. Shiro is saved and his savior out here in the Arizona desert is a man who looks like a wet dream. A living oasis. He wants to fall to his knees in gratitude. Wants to fall to his knees for other reasons.

"I could give you a ride if you want. Might be better than waiting out here in the sun."

Shiro weighs his options. The first is to wait and be cooked to death out here in the sun, praying his luck doesn't run out any further than it already has. The second is dying from shame after he surely finds a way to embarrass himself while riding on the back of Keith's motorcycle.

Keith passes Shiro his helmet and pats the back of his bike expectantly. When Shiro climbs on, he can't decide if this is heaven or hell.

Shiro's legs cage in Keith's, practically enveloping his smaller body. Shiro is tall enough that he could probably rest his chin on the top of Keith's head if he leaned forward a little. It's—a _lot_. Shiro doesn't know where to put his hand and, after a moment of internal struggle, settles for wrapping his arm around Keith's midsection and holding himself stiffly to avoid fully pressing his chest along Keith's back. He feels fresh sweat break out on the back of his neck that has nothing to do with the heat.

"I-is this okay?"

"You're good, big guy. Just hold on tight."

* * *

The ride takes less than half an hour. From his position on the back of the bike, Shiro can see the cool line of Keith's neck peeking out from the curtain of his hair. He wants to lick away the bead of sweat that slides down below Keith's shirt.

He doesn't know what's come over him. He's got self-control, he's got discipline, he's got a sense of propriety. Back when they had first started dating, Adam even used to tease him by calling him a Boy Scout, the type to walk little old ladies across the street, innocent as a virgin's smile, and a million other things that implied Shiro was a bastion of pure thoughts. He's not supposed to see a handsome guy on a motorcycle and turn into a slobbering caveman like this. The problem is just that Keith smells _so_ good, like sweat and sun-warmed leather.

For most of the ride, though, he's too busy to fantasize—it takes all his concentration to cling to Keith with his only arm and keep his balance. Keith is a safe driver and only goes 10 over, but Shiro still prays nothing jostles them and sends him flying off.

They pull into the cramped parking lot of a garage with a peeling, faded sign above that states MARMORA MOTORS.

The garage is cavernous with doors pulled open wide to invite in the dust and heat of the desert. Cars in various states of disassembly and decay are parked across the scuffed epoxy floor. Some are hoisted high on risers, others are dented and missing wheels, looking more like husks than anything that might have ever run. The smell of motor oil grows thick in the air as Keith leads him inside.

Even with enough knee-high box fans in the garage making enough noise to rival a jet engine, it's still as sweltering inside as it is out. At least it's a reprieve from direct sunlight beating down on them.

Keith, further cementing his guardian angel status, digs out two mercifully-cold water bottles from a cooler and tosses one to Shiro, who chugs almost the entire thing in one go. Fuck, the desert is hot. He's wiping away a trickle from his chin when he catches Keith looking at him from the corner of his eye. Keith turns on his heel and leads him further on, and Shiro wonders if it's the heat that's caused the tips of Keith's ears to go pink.

"Hey, Kolivan," Keith calls out into the room. "I'm borrowing the tow."

"Bring it back in one piece," booms a rough voice from the other side of the garage.

"Ooh, little Keith's taking the tow," says another mechanic from where he's pulling a tire down from a pile. "You sure you can handle that big thing all by yourself?" The mechanic winks.

Keith scowls and grabs a pair of keys off a rack. "Fuck off, Regris."

* * *

When they make it back to the car, there’s not much Shiro can do to help, but Keith doesn’t seem to need any. Keith is focused as he works, tightening straps, securing chains, and darting back and forth between the truck and the Mustang, murmuring a checklist of things to do under his breath. When he's done, they slide back into the truck's cab and gingerly tug their precious cargo back to the garage. This time, Keith goes 10 under.

It's getting late by the time they return, the summer sun finally beginning to set. Most of the other mechanics have gone home, save for a gruff-looking man named Ulaz in the corner of the garage who's tinkering with 'a personal project,' as Keith explains it. He invites Shiro to stay with him in the garage as he works on the car instead of waiting in the empty reception office.

It doesn't take long to replace the alternator. Keith works with the same sort of quick efficiency that he had when was setting up the tow. At one point, he gathers the hair at the base of his skull and pulls it into a tiny ponytail. It exposes more of the delicate column of his neck, flushed slightly with exertion. There are short pieces that fall forward and frame his heart-shaped face. Shiro is prepared to walk straight out into the desert and just let the sand swallow him whole at this point.

They make small talk as it goes and Shiro is somehow able to not _completely_ embarrass himself whenever Keith looks up at him innocently through dark eyelashes. Keith explains all of the pieces he's unhooking and removing, the tools he's using, and the parts he's replacing. The hard part, he says, is just _getting_ to the alternator where it's nestled in beneath a million belts, plugs, caps, and bolts. They have the right replacement part in a closet somewhere and Shiro comes out the other end knowing vaguely more about cars than he did when he woke up this morning. He even hands Keith tools a few times without getting them mixed up.

By the end of it, Shiro is sitting crossed legged on the garage floor next to Keith, leaning against the tires of the Mustang. The car is done, but they're chatting like kids at a sleepover. The sun has long since sunk below the horizon and the first stars are twinkling in the night sky. Even Ulaz has called it quits for the night.

"So, where you headed now that your car's fixed back up?" Keith asks.

"Galaxy Garrison. I'm an instructor over there."

"Oh, you're a Garrison boy, huh?"

Shiro tells him about the specialized physical therapy program he's in—his reason for being so far from the Garrison. It's been two years since the mission that cost him his arm and he's still driving to Phoenix twice a month to visit the docs at the Altea Institute. Now that he's stuck planet-side, he's teaching promising young Garrison pilots who have the potential to go farther than Shiro ever could.

In turn, Keith tells him about the crew at Marmora Motors, how Kolivan took him in when he was knee-high to a grasshopper and showed him how to take apart a car and put it back together again before he even got his learner's permit. The crew still sees him as the baby of the group and gives him a lot of grief for it, which he says is frustrating because it means they don't let him take on bigger jobs.

Keith locks gazes with Shiro for a second before ducking his eyes. "They never want to take me seriously. I work hard but they always find reasons to hassle me." He bites his lip. "It was... nice, having you trust me with everything today. Finally feels like I did something right for once." He looks back up at Shiro and his eyes are blazing.

"For what it's worth, I think you're pretty amazing at what you do," Shiro says. It's true—he can't believe he was lucky enough to have someone like Keith save him from certain death in the desert. Keith blushes down to his neck at the praise. Shiro wants to pull at his collar to see how far that rosy tinge goes down.

He's suddenly struck by how alone they are in this moment. It would be all too easy to lean over, to press Keith against the body of the car and kiss him slowly. He likes Keith, likes how easy he is to talk to, and likes how his eyes light up when he's talking about fixing up his motorcycle. Likes how his face slides into a naturally grumpy expression when he's listening intently, lips in a perpetual pout.

The moon is high and the desert has cooled by the time they pack up and say their goodbyes. Keith locks the garage's doors as Shiro inches the Mustang out into the parking lot. Shiro gets out and approaches Keith as he straps a toolbox onto the back of his motorcycle, just where Shiro sat a few hours ago. Keith smiles at him, shy and eager.

He pulls a business card out of his toolbox, slips it into the pocket of Shiro's shirt, and pats it, letting his palm linger a moment. His hand is so small on Shiro's broad chest. The tilt of his chin is confident, but his eyes are wide and wavering a little. He's beautiful. "Call me sometime."

The heat of the day has dissipated but Shiro is still burning. His self-control finally abandons him and, without fully realizing what he's doing, he reaches over to tuck a piece of Keith's hair behind his ear. "Anything for you."


End file.
